


In Our Corner of Paris

by goatsongs



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Comfort, Crack, Established Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Gen, Idiots, Learning how to communicate, Love, M/M, kittens are involved, life is hard but they love each other, maybe also dogs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:42:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26563057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goatsongs/pseuds/goatsongs
Summary: While playing with Enjolras’ hair Grantaire finds a grey hair and Enjolras starts having a quarter life crisis. Grantaire tries to find a solution.
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17
Collections: Sewerchat Anniversary Exchange 2020





	In Our Corner of Paris

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LuckyBossuet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyBossuet/gifts).



“You _what_ ?!”   
  
Grantaire sighed, immediately regretting what he’d said.   
  
They were currently sat on the couch of the flat they shared, Enjolras draped like a cat over most of the couch, with his head on Grantaire’s lap. Grantaire was lazily stroking Enjolras’ hair, looking down at his partner, always in awe of the effortless domesticity they had achieved over the past few months of living together. 

As he threaded his fingers through Enjolras’ hair, his skin brown against Enjolras’ dirty blond curls, he noticed something that he had never noticed before. A single grey hair, hidden behind the lock of hair curling over Enjolras’ forehead, that Grantaire had stroked back in a way that had made Enjolras sigh.   
  
“I just found a grey hair.” He said, mildly amused, and ready to let it be forgotten as an offhand comment on a lazy morning where, thankfully, neither of them had to work. 

  
–   
  


“You _what_ ?!” Enjorlas shot up from his position, and Grantaire mourned the loss of contact.   
  
“Uh,” Grantaire hesitated. Enjolras had stormed away from him and was now standing in front of the long mirror in the entrance hall of their tiny parisian flat, frantically searching through his hair, looking like he was expecting to find a colony of fleas in there.   
  
“It was just one hair,” Grantaire tried, “it’s normal for someone at your age to have a single white hair.”   
  
Enjolras was inspecting the front of his scalp, his nose half an inch away from his reflection. Grantaire tried not to laugh.   
  
“You’re also generally prone to stress. I’m surprised you didn’t wake up with completely white hair after the, uh, _situation_ with the committee.” Recently Enjolras had been overworking himself. He seemed to have single handedly resolved a series of problems that had arisen with the activist organisation that they usually worked with as an independent group despite not even being one of the executives. It had been a long two weeks of having to endure Enjolras waking up in the middle of the night and furiously hacking away at his laptop in hopes of salvaging the situation.   
  
Enjolras glared at him through the mirror.   
  
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” He snapped.   
  
“No, that was a joke.” Grantaire said slowly, tentatively.   
  
“Is this what awaits? Can I not handle stress anymore without getting grey hair?” He was staring at his reflection as if it had just punched him.   
  
“Seriously, Enjolras, one grey hair is not a big deal, wh-” Grantaire tried again, pushing himself up from the couch and coming to stand by the panicked man.   
  
“Not a big deal?! Grantaire, I’m basically _balding_. This is terrible.” 

Grantaire frowned, stopping himself from reaching up to the back of his scalp, where hair was already starting to thin. Enjolras already knew about this.   
  
“That’s, not very nice, Enjolras.” He stumbled over his words a little. It was still hard for him to openly express discomfort about Enjolras’ behaviour in that way, but they’d had so many conversations about boundaries over the past months of them dating that boundaries had begun sounding like a strange word. So he was pushing himself to always speak up. It was getting easier, and he wasn’t scared of Enjolras snapping at him anymore, because Enjolras was also learning.   
  
Enjolras frowned, turning his head slowly toward Grantaire.   
  
“What?” He seemed genuinely confused. Grantaire sighed. He’d also discovered, over their time of being together, how much Enjolras didn’t notice when it came to interacting with people, so he’d grown used to telling him directly what bothered him, without beating around the bush. He had grown to appreciate this way of communicating. Normally Grantaire was the kind of person to run around in circles hoping someone would have the ridiculous idea to try and read his mind, and it had always ended tragically, with him feeling neglected and other people feeling confused and alienated. Grantaire was learning how to talk through Enjolras, who in turn was learning how to listen.   
  
“Well, I’m kind of balding, you know. And you’re saying it like it’s a bad thing.” Grantaire grimaced through the embarrassment.   
  
“Oh. Right. Sorry.” Enjolras replied awkwardly. They’d talked about it many times. No matter how much they didn’t want it to matter, their age difference was something Grantaire specifically had struggled with, as he was nearing thirty at a terrifyingly alarming rate, and Enjolras had just turned twenty-three and seemed fresh as a daisy. And hell, he still looked like a seventeen year old, while Grantaire often felt like he was tagging along feeling old and ugly. It was one of the many insecurities that he was trying to heal since he stopped drinking. He no longer felt like this all the time. Sometimes, the pattern of thought would reappear and he would find himself having to shoo it away like a mosquito, while other times it felt a lot heavier. However, slowly but surely he was beginning to see his age as a point of pride, a label of prize for having lived as long as he had. 

They stayed in silence for a long moment, Enjolras looking at Grantaire through the mirror’s reflection and Grantaire pointedly looking at his feet. Enjolras leaned over to touch his elbow.   
  
“That was mean and I didn’t think. I apologise.”   
  
“It’s alright.” Grantaire pushed down the dark coils of sadness gripping at his stomach. He took Enjolras’ hand in his own, looking at him and placing his hand on Enjolras’ cheek, his fingers carding through the side of his scalp.   
  
“You’d look hot with grey hair.” He said with a smile curling his lips and crinkling his eyes.   
  
Enjolras very nearly pouted, but Grantaire could see his amusement. He leaned in to kiss him gently, chastely, as if trying to convey how truthful he was being. He felt his fingers itch to paint Enjolras as a white haired angel, light spilling through him as he looks up, the redness of his cheeks streaking his face like tears. Enjolras probably wouldn’t like it. He was uncomfortable with Grantaire using him as a muse for his self-indulgent religious imagery paintings, so Grantaire tried not to show him when he did. When Grantaire pulled away, Enjolras’ eyes were wide with love.   
  
“I think I’m having a quarter-life crisis.” Enjolras said, and Grantaire laughed soundly.   
  
“You think?” Grantaire teased, and Enjolras rolled his eyes.   
  
“It’s okay, baby, we’ve all been there.” He added, kissing the back of his hand.   
  
“What can I do to combat it?”   
  
Grantaire elatedly got a flash of Enjolras in a suit of armour and a sword.   
  
“Oh, y’know…” He thought for a moment, “Some shave their head, some get a pet.”   
  
Enjorlas frowned suspiciously.   
  
“Well, I’m not shaving my head.”   
  
Grantaire smiled, and ran his hand through Enjolras’ hair.   
  
“Good.”   
  
They stood there together, in silence, looking at each other. Enjolras softly placed his chin on top of Grantaire’s head. If someone had walked in on them, this is what they would see reflected in the mirror, the gentle afternoon light shifting softly into the evening: Enjolras with his eyes closed, breathing slowly, his pale face reddened by the acne on his cheeks, his curls mussed up by effusions, and Grantaire, his face buried in the crook of the other man’s neck, jet black hair curling around his ears and getting longer by the day. They looked like nothing more than two tired, young men sharing a moment of love, under the impression that they must slowly release their youth to take on the rest of their lives. Enjolras tightened his grip and pulled back so he could look at Grantaire, searching his face with a gentleness they had both grown familiar with.   
  
“I love you.” Enjolras said, smiling. Grantaire believed everything Enjolras told him, and so he believed this too, fiercely.   
  
“I love you too.” They held each other.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
The next day, Grantaire had formulated a plan. He would get Enjolras a cat.   
  
In truth it had not been an entirely original idea of his. Feuilly’s adoptive sister Musichetta had a cat who had recently given birth to a litter of four kittens, and was looking for people to adopt them. After Grantaire asked Feuilly to send him as many photos as he could, he decided that a cat was the perfect way for Enjolras to get over his quarter life crisis. Though he wouldn’t admit it easily, he was also doing this a little bit for himself. He briefly thought about how not talking to Enjolras about it first was probably not the smartest way of going about it, so he asked Jehan if xe would consider adding another cat to xes growing family. Jehan simply replied with a string of heart-eye emojis, which Grantaire took as an enthusiastic ‘yes’. 

When he went to Musichetta’s house with his newly bought carrier, Feuilly in tow, he was struck by how similar her and Feuilly were. They looked nothing alike in features, and they weren’t blood related as far as he knew, but the way they both moved and the ease with which they smiled revealed the kind of closeness that comes with growing up together and struggling in much the same ways. As if in confirmation of that, the walls of Musichetta’s flat were covered in small paintings, and the air was permeated with a faint smell of chalk mixed with the distinctive cat smell. Both her and Feuilly were artists. He wondered if they’d influenced each other’s art in any way.   
  
He was brought to the miniscule living room, where in the corner, inside a cushioned basket, lay an exhausted mother with her kittens snuggling close to her warmth. Grantaire leaned down to take a look at them. They were not as small as he had expected, and only three of them were visible in the pile of black fur. From behind the basket another kitten looked up at him blankly, big eyes fixed on him. This one was grey.   
  
“How old are they?” He turned toward Musichetta and looked up at her.   
  
“About 10 weeks.” She followed his gaze back to the grey cat who had now started meowing loudly.   
  
“She’s fucking feisty, that one. She keeps ambushing me.” Musichetta leaned down and tried to grab the kitten just as she was trying to dart away again. She began meowing loudly again.   
  
“She sounds like a Pokémon.” said Feuilly from the couch he had immediately occupied when he’d entered, without looking up from his Nintendo DS console.   
  
“I think I like her.” Grantaire said softly, and took her from Musichetta. The kitten still fit in his cupped hands, but she was struggling, trying to be free of him and biting at his palm. Grantaire felt like he could cry. If someone had asked Grantaire in that exact moment he would have said that he was suddenly ready to die for this tiny fiend. He looked up to Musichetta, who seemed like she was trying not to laugh at him.

  
“I see some imprinting going on here.” She said.   
  
Grantaire laughed, and lifted his hands to look at the kitten at face level.   
  
“Yeah. I never wanted to be a mother, but at this moment? I feel like I finally understand motherhood.” Grantaire said half jokingly. The kitten was staring at him, her tiny spot eyebrows making it look as if she were frowning. She tried scratching at his cheek.   
  
Feuilly snapped a picture with his phone.   
  
“That’s cute. What are you going to do if Enjolras doesn’t want it?”   
  
“Ask him to move out.” Grantaire joked. The kitten tried to escape his hands once again and Grantaire let him. He watched as she darted toward her siblings and scuffled with one of the other ones, who was significantly less awake.   
  
Grantaire stood up and dropped himself onto the couch next to Feuilly, dropping his face into Feuilly’s (admittedly enormous) shoulder.   
  
“Hey there, little guy,” Feuilly said softly and scratched Grantaire’s head. Being around Feuilly was so easy because nothing made him feel judged. For Feuilly everything was matter-of-fact. If something was going wrong he would simply say it, with no difficulty or accusation, and Grantaire needed that. He had seen Feuilly often at Amis meetings, listening on the sidelines, or speaking to Combeferre and Enjolras with his quiet and unbothered demeanor, but they had become close friends when he discovered that Feuilly attended his same recovery group.   
  
“What are you playing on that relic?”   
  
“Cookin’ Mama.” 

  
“You're so fucking weird.” Said Grantaire fondly.  
  


“Thank you.” Said Feuilly, and Grantaire could hear the smile in his voice. 

  
“Do you guys want some coffee?” Shouted Musichetta from the kitchen.   
  


They bickered about putting sugar in coffee as it got cold in their hands, and the afternoon ticked by as gently as leaves following the wind toward the Seine.   
  
  


* * *

It was early evening when he pushed the door of his apartment complex open with the carrier in one arm and a bag of cat litter in the other.

When he arrived at his door he could hear quite a lot of movement coming from outside. 

Grantaire paused and heard Marius’s goose honk laughter. Enjolras wasn't alone. It wasn't unheard of for Marius to hang out at their place, although he usually found himself there as a consequence of being invited by Grantaire, so it was perplexing. 

As he entered he decided to momentarily leave the kitten and litter at the entrance of the hall. 

“Babe, I’m home!” He shouted to make himself known. 

Silence fell immediately. Grantaire frowned. He heard some rushed shuffling and a door clicking shut.   
  
As he entered the living room all there was was Enjolras standing uprigh, back straight like a broom, red in the face and clearly trying to look innocent.   
  
“Hey, uh… sweetie.” Enjolras grinned nervously.  
  
“What’s going on?”   
  
A loud bump sounded from behind the closed bedroom door. Grantaire stared at it, then slowly looked back toward Enjolras. He normally didn’t despise surprises, but he was starting to think this wouldn’t be a good one, and he was very much starting to hope that Enjolras would have a good and pleasant explanation for all the odd behaviour and strange noises… and Marius.   
  
“Enjolras, care to explain?”   
  
Enjolras flushed redder and looked down at his feet, mumbling something quietly.   
  
“Speak up.” Grantaire was starting to get annoyed.   
  
“I thought you’d be back later!” Enjolras blurted out in a high-pitched tone.   
  
Grantaire narrowed his eyes and was quite ready to take two strides and open the bedroom door when someone on the other side of it barked.   
  
Well. Someone meaning… a dog?

Unless it was Marius barking, and really, Grantaire wouldn’t put it past him.   
  
He snapped his head back toward Enjolras, his eyes dancing.   
  
“Enjolras?”   
  
Enjolras looked at him like a deer caught in headlights until he sighed loudly and dropped his shoulders.   
  
“I got us a puppy.” He mumbled.   
  
Grantaire clapped his hand over his mouth, incredulous. Enjolras took a deep, frantic breath and put his hands in front of himself as if trying to quell Grantaire.   
  
“But, okay, _but_ if you don’t want him, we can give him back. It’s okay, this– this was supposed to be a surprise and it wasn’t supposed to go this way and Marius stayed way too long, because he was helping me transport him–”   
  
“Enjolras.”   
  
“–and well, I didn’t know how you would react and I’m sorry if this was crossing some kind of line, I know I’m bad at these things and just know I’m really really trying and please don’t worry about the dog–”   
  
“Enjolras!” Grantaire exclaimed loudly , desperate to stop the panic stream of thoughts Enjolras tended to fall into quite often. Usually the only way to interrupt him was to shout over him, which Grantaire was proud to say he was an expert in.   
  
“I–” Enjolras sighed. “What?” He asked sadly, not quite knowing where to look, his eyebrows quirked in a frown that Grantaire could only find endearing. Grantaire burst into laughter, unable to stop himself. Enjolras looked up, confused and the tiniest bit annoyed.   
  
“What?!”   
  
“Enjolras,” tried Grantaire, laughter still softening his voice. “Wait here.” And he shuffled back to the hall to pick up the carrier. At the last second he changed his mind, and instead opened the small cage door, gently picked up the creature who was squashed up against the opposite side of the carrier, and scooped her up in his hands. Curled up, her small claws grabbing onto him for dear life, she almost fit snugly in his palm.   
He walked into the living room and Enjolras gasped. 

“This is a joke.” He tried, now it was his turn to be incredulous.   
  
“I promise you it isn’t.”   
  
There was a sudden shuffle behind the door, and Marius coughed, as if to make himself known.   
  
“Uh, guys?” he called, muffled by the door.   
  
“What is it?”   
  
“The dog just peed on– uhm –I think that’s Grantaire’s sweater…”   
  
Enjolras and Grantaire looked at each other.   
  
“This is going to be chaos.” Grantaire sighed.   
  
At the same time Enjolras said “Fuck, I forgot to ask the landlord.”   
  
With Grantaire’s sweater now full of dog piss, and their living situation being no laughable matter, they laughed. 

**Author's Note:**

> I realised that I'm bad at writing fluff but I hope this puts a smile on your face! A fluffy epilogue will follow at some point. 
> 
> I love these chaotic gay bitches! good for them!


End file.
